


Ghosts

by Haely_Potter



Series: Bending the Universe [23]
Category: Doctor Who
Genre: F/M, Gen, Other, POV Alternating, Reunion, Sentient TARDIS, Timey-Wimey
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-10-01
Updated: 2014-10-01
Packaged: 2018-02-19 12:36:22
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,702
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2388431
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Haely_Potter/pseuds/Haely_Potter
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Seeing the Doctor and River kissing, Rose decides not to tell him she's back. As she tries to leave, the TARDIS intervenes, seeing as she misses her too.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Ghosts

**Author's Note:**

> Songs used to inspire this, are I know him so well, from Chess, What about us, by John Barrowman, and She'll never be you, by Snob Scrilla. I don't own said songs.

Being back in her own universe didn't feel as good as she had thought it would.

It may have had something to do with the curly haired woman she knew to be River Song pressed against the TARDIS, being thoroughly snogged by a young man wearing tweed.

Or it may just have been the freezing air that hit her face when she appeared there.

Either or. It didn't really matter and she had to get away before threw up what ever she had in her stomach.

She turned and walked away, avoiding the Georgian Londoners.

He had changed, regenerated, just as John had warned her, and though his last two selves had loved her, one enough to sacrifice himself for her, the other enough to let her go, this new one had never even met her. Memories might transcend regeneration, as well as feelings for someone who was there for it, but what about feelings for people who weren't there? She knew the Doctor had missed Sarah Jane, had loved her as a friend, but he had had no problem leaving her behind a second time. Maybe this new Doctor knew he had loved her once, but now his hearts were filled by River Song? He had had a wife before, after all, and he'd gotten past that.

She couldn't let her being back in this universe destroy his new happiness. She had other people, other friends, who could help her get her identity back and create a new life, find out who she was without a Doctor in her life.

Glancing down at her wrist, she knew the crew back in Pete's world had already dismantled the dimension cannon, so what she now had was a regular vortex manipulator, a working one. Jack would welcome her with open arms, so would Mickey... but Sarah Jane had also said she could seek her out if she ever had a need to. _Some things are worth breaking your heart for_ , she'd said, and Rose couldn't have agreed more, now that she was older and wiser, and the Doctor was more than worth it, as was his happiness.

With a clenching heart, accepting but still breaking, she dialed a set of co-ordinates to her vortex manipulator and hit activate.

The normal, nauseating feeling of time travel without a capsule overtook her, and then she was standing next to the TARDIS on an alien planet, staring at the tweed wearing Doctor and River Song share a kiss over a picnic.

She clenched her fists, This wasn't where she wanted to be, this wasn't what she wanted to see. This was just rubbing salt in her wounds.

She laid a hand on the TARDIS' blue shell, feeling a spark of hope that wasn't hers.

"Was it you, old girl? Did you bring me here? Why? As you can see, he doesn't need me," she whispered to the beloved blue box.

A feeling of longing and belonging swept over her, followed by a feeling of possessiveness and disregard of something that wasn't Rose.

"So..." Rose tried to translate the feelings she got from the TARDIS, "you want me here, without the Doctor knowing?"

The answering positive feeling was overwhelming.

"How long can you hide me from him? And his companions?"

A feeling of eternity embraced her, and she knew she had her answer.

"I need to talk to people occasionally, so that I don't go mad with cabin fever," she reminded the sentient space- and time ship.

An image of Cardiff and Jack popped to her mind, followed by innumerable market places with all sorts of aliens, Rose talking to them with the Doctor's back turned to her.

Rose bit back a chuckle, knowing that Time Lords had better hearing than humans and if she was too loud, the Doctor might hear her. "You really have it all figured out, don't you? Just sneak behind the Doctor's back?" she asked with a smile. "If, when, he finds out, he's going to either be so very mad, or he's going to laugh himself silly."

A feeling of agreement radiated from the ship, and Rose heard a  _snick_  of opening locks from the TARDIS' doors.

Rose looked over at the Doctor and River Song again, to make sure they were distracted, before walking around the TARDIS' corner and pushing the door open, stepping inside quickly and closing the door quietly. Then she turned and took in the console room that had changed so very much since she'd last been inside.

"Oh, you're beautiful," she breathed and spun around, letting her arms fly free around her as she laughed. "I'll miss the coral, but this is absolutely breath taking."

When she stopped, there was a hologram of her second Doctor by the console. "Thank you Rose Tyler," it said, its voice odd now that it lacked the emotions Rose had become so used to hearing in it. "You are quiet aesthetically pleasing yourself."

Rose laughed as she bounded over to the console. "Why old girl, if I didn't know any better, I'd say you were flirting with me."

"I believe that is what this interaction is called," answered the hologram passively.

Rose grinned. "In that case, we need to update your interface programming to better show emotions, this'll get boring otherwise," she said and caressed the console.

"That would be much appreciated, Rose Tyler, as would any other attention you would pay me," the hologram said, a small, fake looking smile on his face.

"Don't worry, I learned much programming back in Pete's world, even helped with creating the androids' personality base programming. Since you already have emotions and we only have to make the interface be able to show them, it should be much easier," she told the TARDIS with a laugh. Then she yawned.

"Readings indicate Rose Tyler is tired. Would she like to retire to her room for recharging?" asked the hologram.

"I think I might like a light snack and a shower before bed," she answered and was immediately handed a mental imprint of where everything was inside the TARDIS, the kitchen and her room included.

"Good night, Rose Tyler," the hologram said and disappeared.

"Thank you, old girl," said Rose with one last caress before following the mental directions to the kitchen.

'*'*'*'*'*'*'*'*'*'

River had loved the Doctor for a long time, long before she knew him well. Their first meeting was a disaster, she had managed to murder him, had managed to poison him to the point where he should have died, and would have died had she not given him the rest of her regenerations.

Before meeting him for the second time, she had studied him extensively and as deeply as she could and has even written her dissertation on him. He was old and kind and the very last of his kind, even if she was part Time Lord. There were references to him all over history, on Earth and everywhere else, but River knew he must have had other adventures that weren't documented or witnessed at all or hadn't happened yet, before the 51st century.

Then Madam Kovarian and Lake Silencio happened, and the Doctor married her, fifteen minutes after saying he didn't want to marry her.

That if nothing else should have told her their marriage was going to be a difficult one.

Oh, at first it was wonderful. The Doctor was ever so considerate and flirty and they had fun dragging the other on adventures. There were dinners and picnics and balls and ancient or futuristic market places.

But slowly, as she got to know him better, she noticed things, things that she wasn't sure what to make of.

Sometimes he'd look at her hair, when he thought she wasn't looking, and sigh quietly.

Sometimes, when they were kissing, he'd stop abruptly and look frantically for something he never found.

Sometimes he would hug her like he expected her to be shorter.

Sometimes he would make a comment she didn't understand, be it killer Christmas trees or cat-nurse-nuns and then look heart broken.

But he never explained himself. Not once. He'd say it was just his imagination.

In her cell, during the nights the Doctor hadn't broken her out, she'd lay awake and wonder what he had imagined seeing all those times he'd ran off to chase those... _phantoms_.

Was it a woman? Or a man? A friend? An enemy? A lover? Someone dead? Someone alive? A Time Lord? A human? A family member? A former companion?

She wasn't safe from the phantom even inside the TARDIS. Or rather, especially inside the TARDIS.

It was like the old girl herself was haunted, right alongside the Doctor, and she was even less forthcoming about who or what they were haunted by.

River knew the Doctor loved her, that had never been the question. Nor was her love for him ever questioned.

But... it was like he had two different sides, and she only saw the surface of one side. The side that was partially the Oncoming Storm and partially her mother's imaginary friend, the madman with the box. She never saw the full Oncoming Storm. She never saw him vulnerable after that first meeting. She never saw the survivor of the most terrible war the Universe had ever seen. She never saw the man that could kill billions upon billions of creatures with one push of a button.

She never saw the broken man he pretended he no longer was.

Those parts were there, she knew they were, but she never saw them.

Except during a very brief second, just after he gave up looking for the phantom, she saw the disappointment, the anger, the longing, the heart break, the unconditional _love_ flash in his eyes, before everything was ushered back to the back of his mind and locked up tighter than Fort Knox, as the Earth saying goes. During that second she saw the broken an that was looking for a lifeline that was no longer there.

And it hurt her.

That even after so long, he would look for something else when she was right there, offering him her hearts. Offering him all the support she could give him.

But then the Doctor she met started getting younger, and he hadn't married her yet, and she hid and lied and told him  _spoilers_.

That Doctor, that younger Doctor, didn't see the phantom, not as often as the older one at least, but his emotions weren't locked up as heavily and she could see them, the resentment he felt for her when she had to protect the timeline and told him  _spoilers._ Slowly he stopped trusting her and her hearts broke a little bit more each time, only to be repaired when her husband took her on another date, just for him to go running after the phantom, crushing her hearts.

Then she met the Doctor who didn't know her, and his emotions were clear as day on his face.

He didn't trust her, not really, even after she told him his name. The longing and hearts break and hurt and anger and love were all there, long before he loved her, and River knew she'd been fighting a battle she couldn't win.

Who can win against a memory?

'*'*'*'*'*'*'*'*'*'*'*'

The Doctor knew he was haunted. There was no other explanation for it.

It started a little before his death, during his _date_ with doctor Song to the last Frost Fair of the Thames. In the very beginning of the day, when he had kissed River and she hadn't let him stop, his eyes had been half open and from the very corner of his eye he had seen the right shade of blond hair.

He had immediately pulled away from River, looking around wildly for that bottle blond head among the Georgian Londoners, River asking if something was wrong. He'd answered, dejected when he hadn't found her, that it had been nothing, just his imagination.

It couldn't be anything else, she was locked away in Pete's world and no one had their hair down and free in Georgian London.

That's what he told himself that first time.

The second time it happened was on another _date_ with River, this time to Asgard. River had been kissing him again, and from the corner of his eye, he had seen a blond slip into the TARDIS, which, of course, was impossible now that the TARDIS doors opened with a snap of his fingers rather than keys.

Earlier he could have sworn he heard her stifled giggle...

The third time was inside the TARDIS, a pink clad form disappearing behind a corner the Doctor knew to be a dead end without other rooms.

The fourth was a laugh from the empty entertainment room.

The fifth was her scent in the kitchen.

The sixth was her blanket in the library.

The tenth was her whole self at the market place of Helkut, disappearing in the masses a second later.

The twentieth was her used mug in the kitchen when he was alone on the TARDIS.

The fifty-fifth were the words _Bad Wolf_ when time was dying and River was refusing to kill him.

The hundredth was her room, it having been slept in when he knew no one had opened the door in centuries.

All these times he should have been paying attention to River and their _dates_ , letting go of his past and moving on, but every time before he slept, he thought back to the girl with blond hair, dark eyebrows and a tongue touched grin, back to the time when he felt like he  _belonged_.

He tried to love River, he really did, but she just wasn't Rose. Her hair was the wrong shade, it was much too curly, she was too old, she was much too fond of her guns and she didn't appreciate his hats. She was too good a liar, she was too full of spoilers for him to ever feel like they were equals, she was too much like him for comfort.

If he'd wanted someone like that, he'd have fallen in love with the Master or the Corsair or even Romana. But no, he hadn't wanted someone like that. It was why he'd fallen for the human girl after the Time War. The human girl who had questioned him and his motives, who had comforted him and chosen him over her safe, normal, _beans-on-toast_ life. The human girl who trusted him and whom he believed in.

And this really wasn't the time to be thinking about this, he chastised himself as he looked at River, very sexy in her dress and high heels against the background of the singing towers.

Time to say goodbye without the words. Without her knowing he was saying goodbye.

He laughed as they reminisced all their adventures, some with Amy and Rory, some alone together, some that had been accidental meetings.

He presented her with the modified sonic screwdriver and took in the awe on her face when she closed her fingers around it.

He cried when he kissed her goodbye, watching her hop away with her vortex manipulator.

It was like leaving Sarah Jane behind for that first time. He was going to miss her. He always missed them.

Except it was worse since he knew there was no chance to pop in and visit her, like he could do with Sarah Jane. River was as lost to him as Susan, Jamie, Zoe, Adric, Romana, Leela, Donna, Amy, Rory and Rose were.

As he trudged back to the TARDIS, he wondered what he was going to do next, and decided to stop. Stop traveling, stop seeing wonderful things that weren't all that wonderful anyway, just physics or creature made wonders.

Opening the door, he froze where he was, as he took in the blond woman by the new console, talking to a hologram of his previous self.

"...finally think it's time to tell the Doctor?" the blond asked.

"The Doctor already knows. He is standing at the door," the hologram said and the blond whirled around.

Scotch colored eyes met wide green ones, her face breaking into a welcoming smile.


End file.
